The Ellen
Payne Odom Genealogy Library Family TreeThe Family Tree -
February/March 2003Cooper Family Research Program

Have you been contacted
about, or are you already a part of, or do you have living COOPER surnamed
males who are already members of the Male COOPER Surname Reconstruction
Project, aka Male Cooper DNA Group (MCDNAG)? If not, you/they are
definitely great candidates to participate. The Y-chromosome test is best
for this purpose as it remains in the DNA of males surnamed Cooper
relatively unchanged for 500 years or more.

I'll give you some
background, it's lengthy but important:

At the beginning we only
had 6 participants in the group. That is the minimum Family Tree DNA (www.familytreedna.com)
likes to work with to give the special reduced group rate. The test is a
simple inside-the cheek swab with a little instrument that looks like a
cross between a cotton swab and a tiny toothbrush. It is completely
painless and only gathers skin cells from there, no blood is drawn or
submitted.

These six men, surnamed
Cooper, who had no idea if they were related to each other or not, but
seeking DNA matches so as to determine if any of these 6 lines were
related. Hopefully some matches would surface and those who matched could
benefit from each other's research, or at least be pointed in
the right direction for further research.

I had suspected that I
might be related to one of the six, Hiram "Ben" Cooper, of Bella Vista,
Arkansas, (the new Group Administrator) because the name "Fleet" occurred
in my family a number of times. I knew that Ben had volumes of paper trail
on his line, descended from Fleet Cooper, Sr., but I had nothing that
could confirm mine other than a hunch. Ben and I were the first two of the
six to come up matching what is called 12 of 12 markers, a perfect match,
indicating that we had a 99.9% probability of sharing a common ancestor!
We were notified by email, who our match was, along with the matching
person's email address. We opted to go for the 25-marker refinement of our
results, and matching again, we nailed down our common ancestor as having
been no further than approximately 7 generations back. Additional census
information surfaced and I found my g-g-g-grandfather in a neighboring
county to where I live now, who turned out to be a grandson of Fleet
Cooper, Sr. and a cousin to Ben's g-g-g-grandfather.

The group now has 38
participants enrolled, and some of them are still awaiting the test
results. I believe the process has identified about 15 separate lines of
Coopers. Of these there are at least three lines that have two or more
matches, some to the surprise of the participants. So now those in these
three lines know they are genetically related, and through sharing of
research, may round out or fill out missing pieces of their respective
puzzles.

If this sounds like
something you would be interested in doing, please contact the Group
Administrator, H. Ben Cooper at
bcooper@mc2k.com, and he will be more than happy to answer further
questions and help you in joining this growing group.

Neither Ben nor FTDNA will
not breach confidentiality. FTDNA does make contact between participants
who have exact marker matches, 12 and/or 25, and have signed and returned
the Release Form, but they let them further the contact between each
other. They merely give email addresses, no personal information or
addresses.

In addition, there is a
website under development by the Group Administrator (Ben) which will show
the overall progress of the program. Again, the identity of each
individual will be keep secure and a code used which is unique to each
person on the website. The link is:
http://www2.arkansas.net/~bcooper2k/

I know this has been
L-O-N-G, but I hope it sparks an interest in soliciting participants in
the exciting technology, relatively new to genealogy, but gathering a huge
following.

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